The Angels' Pride

by Steven Lindsay

  The final product was Behemoth, a kind of mockery of his original name. The creature who had once been Lord of the Seas was chained to the deserts around Eden to guard it against the Gods. Once the War was won and the Angels had moved to Heaven, Eden was hidden away, and there was no use left for him. He was thrown into Hell.

  The poor creature sounded like it had been through absolute Hell. To have been an animal God then to have been experimented on, twisted and changed beyond recognition. Forced to serve those who had done it then as a reward it been thrown into Hell. She didn’t understand why Gabriel had done it. Though after witnessing Simurgh she wondered if Gabriel took joy in twisting the Gods to the forms she believed they should wear. That sounded a lot like Gabriel, the world should be as she saw it.

  “Why did they use the blood of Tiamat?”

  She was strong in the powers of Chaos, her only equal Gaia.

  “Her blood would be rich with her powers and have the capacity to break order. It allowed for the transition to occur.”

  Exactly. Chaos Blood it is called, it makes many things possible. Even combining spirits and powers. They combined many different living things to create him

  She turned back to watch Behemoth thundering towards her. He was truly...colossal was the only word vast enough she could think of. He was the size of a mountain. He walked on four legs, each ending in a strange blend of hoof and paw, each foot being bigger than the whole of Hades’ castle. His body was muscular, something of a blend between bull and Dragon, moving with a fluid grace. His tail could only be seen as a swinging light that was the same strange glow as his eyes, each bigger than Cerberus at his largest. His head was wide and heavy, crowned with long, vicious looking horns.

  All the while he emitted a low moan. He was in such pain. She could feel it.

  This was going to be like fighting Ziz. She was too small to be easily caught and could latch onto him where he could not reach. She jumped into the air, a violet spark amongst all the grey drizzle. Behemoth would not have noticed that she had taken to the air except for the flash of colour. He roared in terror, its broken mind remembering its forging. Angels brought pain.

  Sariel was flung backwards by its roar alone, the air rushing past her was phenomenal. She had no hope of controlling her flight. All she could do was summon her powers to cocoon herself as she was swept away. Cerberus and the other beasts whined as she was blown away. Then he leapt forward attacking Behemoth’s gigantic leg. The other creatures followed suit.

  Behemoth didn’t even notice, they were fleas to him, and his skin was impregnable.

  Sariel managed to wheel out of the wind, gliding away just under the Lust Clouds. A surge of her magic had the Level above bleeding into this one. Light burst through the clouds, in wide shafts bathing the gloomy swamp. The Damned, the creatures, and Behemoth turned to gaze at something they hadn’t seen in many centuries.

  She soared down while they were all blinded to land on his head. She felt so insignificant, its hairs were longer than she was. It just seemed unfathomable that something living could be this large. On either side of her, his horns rose up as far as skyscrapers. He didn’t even notice that she had landed on him.

  Behemoth’s great strength and power lay in his mass, he could devastate cities in seconds, destroy whole empires within a matter of days. Even battling Gods was no issue for him because they met him on his grounds. They became bigger, thus easier for him to fight. She was so insignificant to him, except the vast amount of power she wielded, and he had no way of stopping her.

  She pushed aside all fear and took a steadying breath before she once again summoned up her powers. It came to her easily and quickly, her fight with Ziz had paved a direct route for her powers. It flooded through her hands and into his armoured skin.

  She fell to her knees as she was assaulted with a backlash of Angel magic. Behemoth was held together with incomplete spells. Gabriel, Ariel, and their mothers had deliberately not finished it, it allowed for him to get even larger, even as it drove him mindlessly obedient to them. The spells could not be broken without killing him. And underneath all the spells she felt Tiamat’s Chaos Blood coursing through his veins. There was nothing to counteract the effects of her blood, but she could finish the spell and in the process hopefully strip him of the Curse.

  Cerberus and the other creatures jumped back from Behemoth’s legs as soon as they started to glow, thin lines creeping their way across him in curving matrixes. Red, green, black and white lines formed their own distinct patterns, but there was another colour, constantly blending and separating, forming patterns that had not been seen in eons. Patterns that scared even Cerberus. Sariel was attempting to control the Chaos coursing through Behemoth.

  Behemoth bellowed in fury as he realised the Angel was on him. He spun around hoping to dislodge her. All he achieved was to send all those beneath him flying in great deluges of water and mud. He moaned in hopelessness, she would not meet him on his battlefield, and he had no chance of locating her.

  Sariel screamed, piercing through even Behemoth’s mournful moans, as Gabriel’s Curse swept up her arms, reacting violently with her own powers. She used her powers to push Gabriel’s back, but she wasn’t going to win against Gabriel’s powers. One of her hands clutched her necklace. Her family had said she was unusually gifted in the powers of Chaos, perhaps she could use that to tip the scales against Gabriel. As it was, her powers were flowing out her at an alarming rate just to hold back the powers trying to surge upwards.

  Dark rainbows danced under her hand as the black opals exploded with light. Her other hand sunk beneath Behemoth’s skin, her arm following quickly as she lost her balance. Then all of her fell forward, sinking through his skin.

  Suddenly light radiated out of Behemoth in every direction, he became a sun shining forth brown, black and brilliant white light. His moans of terror were so loud and powerful that they drove all beings to the ground desperately trying to cover their ears. Even Lilith, who was slinking down the final steps to Gluttony. Even the beings in the other Levels heard his moans.

  Sariel was surrounded by a blaze of light symbols, forming concentric rings around her as she sank through his skin into his bloodstream. Voices whispered, and she felt wild power flowing all around her. She saw strange shapes pushing against her shields. She heard a female laugh and felt the brush of a feminine mind against her hers. Yet the power that surrounded her and continued to attack her was distinctly male.

  She pushed everything far from her, flooding her phenomenal powers through his blood. She might be small, but she was far from insignificant. She searched for the root of his Curse. It didn’t take her long to find it poisoning his heart. But it was layer upon layer of different spells and curses. The final being the corruption of Hell.

  One step at a time she thought. But she had the knack of it. With a flood of her Arch Angel powers, she ripped the Hell Curse to shreds. Its grey fetters burning up in the maelstrom of magic inside him.

  Behemoth’s black fur suddenly exploded off of him, like clouds of ravens taking flight. The darkness was sucked up into the clouds above. The fur underneath was revealed to be dark brown to beige. The burning fires in his eyes died, leaving in their wake tearful brown eyes, raining torrents down on the marsh far below. The magic patterns gracing his skin changed their patterns, forming circular symbols of blazing white light.

  With the Curse lifting and disintegrating she felt the shift in Behemoth, the distinctive make up of his was no longer in conflict. She searched up Bahamut the strongest of all the minds she could feel. She used it as the spirit to graft the other weaker and broken spirits onto. There were even weaker spirits without form or substance that she wove around them all, blending them with his core. She could almost hear the click as all the masculine flavours were finally connected in a natural way. But then the feminine went wild, attacking the core and Sariel with devastating effect. It was trying to wash her away in the deluge of raw power, trying to resist
her every attempt at magic. She was in a magical maelstrom of Chaos powers, everything around her was blood, black opal light and the blue-white of spirits.

  On the outside, the light flaring out of Behemoth turned blood red. Cerberus and the other creatures howled and whined. This wasn’t natural, something had gone terribly wrong. Something had happened to Sariel, this was the Curse clamping back down.

  Sariel spread her mind outwards sensing into the dark, Chaotic, feminine powers flowing around her. Tiamat she thought with single-minded intensity.

  The swirling powers and blood stilled. So it was her. Somehow Tiamat’s blood had retained not only part of her power but part of her consciousness. There was a blinding flash then Sariel felt like she was falling. When the light faded, she discovered she was in a magical void. Around her shifting walls of grey-black power surged upwards like waterfalls in reverse. But she floated in empty space. She turned around and gasped when she saw the being who was trapped in the void.

  She was female, with a beautiful face marred by long gashes exposing bone. Her eyes were like burned out fires, with only the faintest glimmer of what had once been there. Her grey-black hair was floating around her long neck and delicate shoulders. But from the shoulders down her body changed dramatically while her top two arms were Human the next pair down were scorpion pincers. Her stomach was dominated by large udders, her two long legs were Dragon like but the most dominating feature below her waist was her long serpentine tail whipping back and forth. She was a bizarre mismatch of animals. She was something Primordial and very dangerous. To top it off rings and coils of sea water were swirling around her in various concentric rings. The scent of sea water was the only smell in the void.

  “Tiamat?”

  The eyes looked at her, stray tears forming at their edges. “All that is left of me after my children killed me. My blood used time and time again in experiments until eventually the Angels used just a tad too much, transferring all the power of my blood to Behemoth. Trapped lingering in a broken experiment, denied from returning to the Lifestream.” She glared at Sariel “Your kind did this to me” she roared. Her rings of water and the walls of the void wavered.

  “I didn’t, I’m here to help you, to heal you.”

  “What can you do Angel? Experiment on me further, try and fuse me fully with Bahamut. Achieve the blending of male and female, to twist us completely beyond our natures.”

  “No,” She said slowly and carefully “To try and separate you. I cannot separate the souls that now depend on him, they cannot exist on their own. But you two have not been fully combined, you can be separated.”

  “Lies” she screamed as she flung out her arms. Water raced across the void to smash against Sariel’s shields. Tiamat screamed all her rage as she summoned up the full extent of her Chaos magic. They were the powers no one could deflect, except her cousin Gaia and she was long gone.

  Sariel watched as Tiamat was enveloped in brown-black flames, her water rings turned into pure Chaos magic, emitting and swallowing all light. The walls of the void shrank back from the Primordial powers, even magic feared Chaos. With a desperate roar, Tiamat attacked Sariel with her magic. It raced across the void, splashing, burning, sizzling and crumbling, it was the essence of everything. Twisting, destroying, creating and recreating as it went. It smashed against Sariel’s wards destroying them in an instant, encircling her like the death coils of a python.

  Tiamat laughed maniacally as she swamped the Angel with her Chaos powers. No one could survive such an onslaught from such pure Chaos.

  Sariel felt the power coiling around her, smothering her, burning, drowning, cutting, tearing and ripping into her. She was being pulled apart and crushed at the same time. There was nothing she could do to defend herself, her powers were stripped out of her. She let out a faint scream as the raw power tore down her throat. Then she blacked out.

  Ariadne stood at the window looking out over the ruins of Saint Louis Cathedral. There was a sense of satisfaction in seeing the blackened plot of land. It had been enjoyable watching the firemen try to put out the raging purple flames. It had been all over the news, the purple flames had the experts confused. No one had any explanations why all attempts to extinguish the flames had failed or what had started it or why it had been so destructive. She had laughed at the upset priests, they had been distraught over the loss. The Pope had promised to head straight there from Australia.

  New Orleans was currently the religious centre of Hera’s covert empire. Her capital would be New York, but the holy city would be New Orleans. But scattered all across the USA and Mexico were various cities and towns converting to Hera. In Mexico, the Gorgons were growing rapidly in numbers. They were spreading outwards, gaining control of new towns and subjugating them to her rule. Their news was ablaze with the ever increasing numbers of missing people and empty towns. Even the metropolitan edges of cities were beginning to be affected. The Minotaurs had been settled in Colorado, and their numbers were spreading up and down the Great Plains. Their actions, however, were not yet drawing media attention. America was having widespread disappearances all across the nation as the Daemons’ power grew.

  On the other hand, the AIDS cure and the reactivation of magical genes were drawing a huge amount of media attention. Though of course the media didn’t know about magic. The Imperial Hospitals were being denounced by conservatives and medical groups alike for their unusual practices. Despite this, they continued to be set up in ever more cities across the US. The numbers of mages being gained were starting to dramatically increase though the numbers of sorcerers were almost non-existent. So far they had Kyle, who had been a remarkable find and four others. Kyle was by far the extraordinary exception, which was why he was here in the temple with her. She was the only one who could effectively teach him.

  Then there was Juan, who had been personally trained by Hera and set loose. A more disturbed child she had never met, she had met numerous sex abuse victims in her many centuries. They always saddened her, such poor tortured souls. Juan was something different, he had been completely broken, more so than any she had ever euthanized or saved. But Hera had granted him and the others she sent to her considerable power. That much power, their unstable minds and their thirst for revenge scared her.

  But Hera demanded that they be trained, and the Goddess could not be denied. It wasn’t so much their power that scared them but their rage. Magical powers could be dramatically increased by emotion. With the rents and tears to their sanity, their powers were far beyond their gifted levels. The news was full of sex offenders going missing or being found murdered.

  Their rage was burning unchecked across America. Thankfully it was only directed at those who deserved it. But what an army they would be when the time came. For the time being, he was also searching for a home base for them, where they could feel safe beyond the reach of their abusers.

  Hera’s plans were starting to bear fruit. With very few exceptions the magical races had flocked to her, and the power she offered. The empowerment she offered had given them back their pride and purpose. Those healed from AIDS were forever grateful, while mostly under no compulsion many had joined the masses of worshippers. Formal temples were still in the process of being built away from Angels. But already priests and priestesses were in the process of being trained, just as the process of worship was still being developed.

  On top of that, her political manipulations were bearing fruit as well. Senator Worthington was doing surprisingly well in Congress, though his admission of being gay had caused an uproar the followers of Hera had swamped him with so much support that his party had dared not cut him loose. Especially considering a fair number of them were Hera’s. Ariadne was not sure how Hera would initiate the change from the United States of America to her Empire, but it couldn’t be far in the future.

  Her mind drifted off from being overworked when Kyle spoke from behind her making her jump “What is that light?”

  She shrank behind the
curtains and pushed Kyle behind the other. Rays of light were coming down from the clouds, illuminating the dark ground. Descending in the light was an Arch Angel, his six wings catching the sunlight. He raised his hands high and the ground started to shake. The Cathedral started to rebuild itself, slowly, unburning and uncollapsing, walls and debris rising up. It was as though he had turned back time. Before her very eyes, she saw Saint Louis Cathedral standing resplendent once again in the bright sunlight.

  People had stopped to watch, and she could see the media coming like the plague. Streams of sunlight at night were not exactly normal, nor was a burned cathedral rebuilding itself.

  The Arch Angel descended onto the rooftop and spoke, “Welcome all to the love of God, see his wonder and know his kingdom awaits in Heaven.” Then he shot upwards in a blaze of fire and sunlight. She ground her teeth as she heard the gasps of wonder from the observers. Great just what New Orleans needed, a mass influx of Christian zealots.

  She stayed hidden behind the curtain for a very long time, as did Kyle. It was the first time he had ever seen an Angel, but it instinctively made him wary. He knew the stories, but his magic feared the Angels. It was this natural instinct that had taken over that could only explain his next actions.

  He summoned his powers, still vastly untrained and unrefined and unleashed them on the cathedral. There was no warning, no flash, no visuals but suddenly the cathedral exploded as though a bomb had gone off. The explosion shook the city, the bright light flaring in every direction, the mushroom cloud vivid against the night sky.

  Daemons, Lesser Angels, and Humans watched on in avid horror and surprise as the newly erected cathedral was eradicated. Then the flames turned a vivid purple.